eXtream Software Development has managed to get USB audio recording working on Android 3.1 or higher devices! By writing a custom USB audio driver from scratch, both USB audio playback and recording will be possible for a lot of USB audio standard compliant devices.

Lower, but more important, predictable latency that can fully and automatically be compensated for

Zero-latency monitoring on the devices that support it

Control hardware level input gain on the devices that support it

Multitrack recording capability

The USB audio recorder will be available as a stand-alone app and the USB audio driver will be available as an in-app purchase in our flagship multitrack audio sequencer, Audio Evolution Mobile. Currently, only USB audio spec 1.0 is supported, but this will be solved in a subsequent release. Both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices will be supported however.

Requirements will be an Android 3.1 or higher device and the device must support USB 'host' mode. Most recent devices have 'host' mode luckily. If your device has a micro-USB port, you can connect to full-size USB using a so-called USB OTG cable. No rooting of your device is required.

Testers wanted:If you are interested in a pre-release alpha version and meet the following requirements, please send an email to info AT audio-evolution.com:

You have one or more Android devices that meet the requirements

You have one or more USB audio devices

You are fluent in English writing

You usually anwer to emails within 2 days

We hope to have a release within one or two months.

Kind regards,

Davy
eXtream Software Development

Last edited by dwrae on Mon Dec 17, 2012 5:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

So what we're talking here is the ability to connect a USB audio interface to any kind of Android operated smartphone - and record with whatever kind and number of mikes and MIDI your external audio card supports? Just like PC?

You know Jellybean supports audio output through usb now? Isn't this more than half-way to your work?

Anyway would like to know some more since I am about to buy a new phone and audio card, and that would help me decide

Kind of. Not for any kind of device, see the requirements above. MIDI is already possible by the way, see my USB MIDI Monitor app.

Of course I know JB support USB audio output (although funnily it doesn't work for me), but half-way is still not there. The reason Google added USB audio playback is for putting your phone on a speaker system like you can with iPod/iPhones. They are not interested in recording, let alone multi-channel recording! And in the event that Android 5 or 6 supports USB audio recording, it's likely they will still have the terrible latency and latency jitter they have now and no control whatsoever on the internals of the device (mixers, gain, etc.).

Of course we can all wait until hell freezes over, but I think there will be a lot of people who appreciate my effort.

If you buy a new phone, don't buy a Samsung Galaxy S2, that's quite clear from my testers. Samsung delibaretely disabled USB for most types of devices including audio on their S1 and S2's.

Carmelious wrote:So what we're talking here is the ability to connect a USB audio interface to any kind of Android operated smartphone - and record with whatever kind and number of mikes and MIDI your external audio card supports? Just like PC?

You know Jellybean supports audio output through usb now? Isn't this more than half-way to your work?

Anyway would like to know some more since I am about to buy a new phone and audio card, and that would help me decide